Anas Sarwar: 'It is beneath Swinney to claim Labour would do a deal with Reform'
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar was candid with former spin doctor Alastair Campbell about the challenges facing the party
Anas Sarwar has said he is “disgusted” by John Swinney’s suggestion he would make an electoral pact with Reform.
Speaking to former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, the Scottish Labour leader said it was “beneath” the First Minister to take that line.
During the first week of the Holyrood election campaign, Mr Swinney has accused his Labour counterpart of angling for a “grubby backroom deal” with Nigel Farage’s party.
Mr Sarwar said the First Minister “knows it is not true” that he would make an electoral pact with Reform, claiming Mr Swinney was trying to deflect from a “disastrous” first week of the SNP campaign.
He said it was “personally galling” that the SNP leader had stood by him when Reform spent money on a racist advert about him.
A social media advert during the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election used heavily edited footage from a 2022 speech by Mr Sarwar.
The clip included a caption claiming Mr Sarwar wanted to “prioritise the Pakistani community”.
However, Mr Sarwar did not use that phrase.
“But now, when his job is on the line, he wants to claim that the very same people who question whether I'm Scottish enough or not, are now people I'm doing some kind of secret deal with.
“And genuinely, I think it's disgusting. I think it's beneath him.”
Mr Sarwar went on to say the SNP had “deserved” to win elections over the past 20 years but had developed a protocol of “party first, country second”, accusing the Nationalists of “secrecy and cover up” to “protect the machine”.
He was referencing the allegations against former SNP North Lanarkshire Council leader Jordan Linden, who was last week convicted of five sexual assaults against young men and boys.
Mr Sarwar criticised the SNP’s negative campaigning and suggested that the party had also planned an “anti-Starmer style message” but then abandoned it.
He said he understood Mr Swinney’s party had to pulp “a lot of leaflets in response to that”.
However, an SNP source said in response: "The only thing that has been pulped is Anas Sarwar's framed picture of him and his old friend Peter Mandelson."
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At an event in Glasgow, Mr Sarwar said there had been a “rewriting of history” to suggest that Scottish Labour had been ahead of the SNP in the polls following the general election.
“In actual fact, we were only really ahead of the SNP for the week to two weeks in the run up to the actual election, and so we were always going to have a steeper challenge to try and win,” he said.
He added that the UK Labour government had made the Holyrood election “much more difficult”.
But, he said, “there was a major caveat to that if we hadn't won the general election, there is no world in which we could compete in this election and try and persuade people that we needed a change here”.
Mr Campbell also questioned Mr Sarwar’s decision to call for the prime minister to step down, made in the wake of a series of Westminster scandals, including links between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein.
The Scottish Labour leader said he had no regrets.
“I'm the one that's facing that big choice in a big election, and people in Scotland have a right to know what my values are, what my standards are, what I'm willing to accept and what I would do differently,” he said.
“It’s now beyond doubt to people across the country that my first priority and my first loyalty is to Scotland.”
Mr Sarwar insisted the move was not “part of any coup”, saying he stood by the decision and adding: “I didn't care what it meant for individual Westminster politicians, and I didn't care what it meant for Westminster commentators.”
He denied, however, that the move was “ruthless”.
“I’m loveable,” he joked. “I just want people across Scotland to see how lovable I am.”
“You want leaders to be strong and tough and make difficult decisions when they have to,” he said.
“I think sometimes when people hear ruthless, they think heartless at the same time.
“And I've got heart about the things I do.”
Mr Sarwar also said independence is not a major focus of the Scottish Labour campaign.
He said that, while he does not support independence, he is “not going to try and change the mind” of anyone who does.
“What I'm interested though is, how do we as a country come together to make Scotland better right now, and if, in the end, the destination is different for different people, let's make Scotland stronger in the process.”
An SNP source said: “The only thing that has been pulped is Anas Sarwar's framed picture of him and his old friend Peter Mandelson.”
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